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To: caml-list@inria.fr
Subject: Re: another approach to sprintf (Re: ocaml 2.02 bug: curried printf)
References: <19990312160017.60444@pauillac.inria.fr> <19990319174720-10695P.sumii@harp.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp> <19990323171753.17334@pauillac.inria.fr> <ya2pv5ywuem.fsf@zarya.maya.com> <19990325142901.B3236@ips.cs.tu-bs.de>
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From: John Prevost <prevost@maya.com>
Date: 25 Mar 1999 15:52:05 -0500
In-Reply-To: Christian Lindig's message of "Thu, 25 Mar 1999 14:29:01 +0100"
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Christian Lindig <lindig@ips.cs.tu-bs.de> writes:

> The suggested functional approach to printf has another possible
> drawback:  when you want to express all the options like "%5.5f"
> possible in C style printf formatting you need a whole bunch of
> functions.  Since OCaml has no overloading a single `float' function
> for floats can not capture them all. 

Yes, but you can still get the formatting features you want by having
both formats that take arguments (like "lit") and also higher-order
formats (for example, a format which truncates whatever format it is
given to a specific string length, or a format that right justifies
within a certain length, or etc.)

In fact, the system is more powerful precisely because you can do
things like this to extend the system.  Not only can you do %5.5f, you
could also make something to display the float in binary, or to
display the fraction as a vulgar fraction symbol (i.e. ½).

John.